Get your tree's biodata, GPS location and track its progress for five years

Sneha Mahale

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Updated: Aug 10, 2013 04:21 IST

Technology is taking over the world and conservation seems to be one of the major beneficiaries. While multiple videos of brown bear catching salmon in Alaska have gone viral, ensuring that more is done to preserve their ecosystem, BNHS Conservation Education Centre (CEC) in Goregaon, too, has got in on the act. As part of their ‘Adopt A Tree’ initiative, you could get GPS coordinates of your tree, click photographs with it and even get seasonal updates via email for five years. The cost of adopting a tree is R10,000.

“The 33-acre forest at BNHS CEC in Goregaon has been safeguarding more than 125 indigenous tree species for the past 30 years. It is a natural forest with old trees. Trees such as Asan, Teak, Kusum, Red Silk Cotton, Bonfire, Elephant Apple, Kalamb, Grewia and Tetu, among others, are native species to the area,” says Atul Sathe, manager-communications, BNHS India.

To begin with, you could select what species you’d want to adopt, by going through their individual biodata. This can be done on phone. Once you have zeroed in on the species, BNHS will put with your name tag on the chosen tree. You could also click photographs of yourself with the tree, record its GPS location and look after it. On its part, BNHS will email you the photo and GPS co-ordinates, send you an adoption certificate, email interesting observation on birds, bees and butterflies on your tree, pictures of flowers and fruits, and invite your family to celebrate its anniversary. You will also be sent seasonal updates for five years on the tree’s progress. This is the first time that the BNHS is depending this much on technology for a project. “We are doing it so that people feel more involved in the project,” says Sathe.